Anthropologists: Human Terrain Teams, National Power

Should Anthropologists Work Alongside Soldiers?, (USA Today)…Dan Vergano and Elizabeth Weise

The military for years has enlisted anthropologists, depending on their expertise to write up analyses of distant places and cultures.

At the just-concluded American Anthropological Association meeting here, the question of whether anthropologists should take part in military operations took the stage, though not for the first time. In 2007, the AAA’s executive board expressed “disapproval” of anthropologists’ work in Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that they helped in “identifying and selecting specific populations as targets of U.S. military operations.”

“All anthropologists are working to make the world a better place,” said panelist Brian Selmeski, a professor of anthropology at the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He quoted an infantry officer who told him, “We don’t need your help to break things. We need your help so we don’t have to break things.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates agrees.

“It is an unfortunate reality that many people believe there is this sharp divide between academia and the military — that each continues to look on the other with a jaundiced eye,” he said in May. “Challenges facing the world require a much broader conception and application of national power than just military prowess.”